


a girl to call my own

by secretsarenotforfree



Category: One Tree Hill
Genre: F/M, TW for Lucas Scott mentions, also a couple Peyton Sawyer references, pls take it, this is a look into Julian's thoughts through season six i guess ANYWAY this came out of somewhere
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:15:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25123768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secretsarenotforfree/pseuds/secretsarenotforfree
Summary: (They shouldn’t be doing this.)They’re doing this.Bending down to meet Brooke Davis’s lips was easier than he ever expected it to be, and sweeter than he could have dreamed. Her hair feels like silk over his hands when he cups her head, and he doesn’t want this to stop. Not now, not for a long time.
Relationships: Julian Baker/Brooke Davis
Kudos: 8





	a girl to call my own

**Author's Note:**

> brooke penelope davis deserved a man to treat her right and julian baker WAS THAT MAN. i am not taking opinions on it at this time and ever. i love the two of them very much and brooke deserved her happy ending. idk if i'm going to write more of them but maybe??? anyway take this. basically follows their season six journey.
> 
> title from 'dream lover' by bobby darin!

He didn’t understand it.

He probably never would, when all was said and done.

There were two men in the world who had the distinction of having dated two extraordinary women. Brooke Davis, sparkling eyes and a killer smile, everything all at once or nothing at all, and Peyton Sawyer, with a soul that was a deep thrum of a tune, and stories traced in black ink. They were both one of a kind women, that fact had never been in doubt, but here, looking at her, Julian would never understand it. 

How anyone,  _ anyone, _ could pick Peyton, over Brooke.

_ Lucas’s words could never have done her justice _ , is the first thought that runs through his mind when a short force of nature perches on the arm of the backstage couch and accuses him of owning his own name. She is an imperious shake of her head, and a husky voice that is everything but amused when she tells him that anyone who messes with her friends messed with her too. Her conviction and clear bad opinion of him shouldn’t be charming, but it is. 

_ Brooke Davis _ . 

Good to know.

He walks into her store, purple and wood and screaming of her and there she is, dark hair flying and a freedom that had been nowhere backstage. It shouldn’t be endearing then, either, that she’s a near picture of one of his favorite films, coming to a screeching halt when she catches sight of him. Brooke is stunning, and the film geek inside of Julian wants nothing more than to capture that on film for all eternity. Her walls may be slammed up high as they can go, vitriol her first defense to anyone he deems a threat (Julian seems to fit squarely in that category), but it can’t hide the vulnerability hiding deep in those vibrant hazel eyes. 

He hires her because she’s talented, and has an intimate knowledge of the subject content, and he wants to see what lies beneath that dagger like outlook on men she didn’t trust. He traces a contemplative gaze over Brooke’s raven dark curls and admires the way that her smoky eye look only makes her look more tragic and vulnerable wrapped in a warrior's strength. 

The first time she genuinely smiles at him, pleased at his first levels of feedback on the costumes from the movie, the breath gets knocked out of Julian’s lungs too fast for him to remind himself that that is entirely too strong a response. It's not his fault, truly - those DIMPLES should be classified as a weapon. He wants to tell himself that it’s all just business, but they  _ work _ , over glasses of red wine and the watercolor splashes of her ideas, and he wants to see where this could go. Wants to know if that’s even a line he could be allowed to cross.

(They shouldn’t be doing this.)

They’re doing this.

Bending down to meet Brooke Davis’s lips was easier than he ever expected it to be, and sweeter than he could have dreamed. Her hair feels like silk over his hands when he cups her head, and he doesn’t want this to stop. Not now, not for a long time.

For those who weren’t lucky enough to know, kissing Brooke Davis was like kissing an angel of sorts. An angel who, after the first tentative presses of lips, kissed with everything she had, drawing him down to her level and pulling him to her like that was what she made to do. Brain meltingly amazing and something Julian couldn’t help but do anything but focus himself wholly on.

(How could  _ he _ have ended anything with her?

How could he have turned away the discovery of those perfect lips? From the way that Brooke’s fingers felt running over his shoulders and pulling him closer and how she said his name like it was a prayer and she was begging to believe? Julian wanted to worship at her feet and protect her from anyone who would wish her harm.)

Julian grew used to the way her hair smelled like lilies of the valley and how soft her sighs were in her sleep. His hands found comfortable places all over to call his own, from the curve of her waist to the slant of her chin. Brooke’s laugh sank straight into his chest and wrapped itself around his heart and Julian couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge how far he was falling until he was totally gone. The first time he gets to see that pretty mouth drop open on a gasp, the tremble of velvet soft skin under his fingertips from exertion, and the lazy way Brooke kissed after sex, she took what was left of him and wrapped it around her finger without even knowing it.

(He makes it a point to learn all the ways that Lucas Scott had damaged her too big heart, from those around her more than her because he knew that no matter what she said the memory still stung. The pages of his copy of  _ An Unkindness of Ravens _ had been scored mostly on the pages where Lucas tried to use pretty words to talk about the way he’d stomped all over Brooke’s faith in men and excused himself for it. Brooke was scared, he could tell, but hopeful, and it was that hope that Julian clung to.) 

Being a movie producer meant that it was Julian’s business to know a good thing when he saw it, and Brooke Davis was about the best thing he had ever seen. The more she let him in, no matter what he knew she was holding back, the more he wanted to. Julian wanted the full package with her - the crazy mother he continually heard of, the angsty teenager who wore too much eyeliner and received so much of the love that emanated from Brooke’s gorgeous heart, the deeply connected high school friends and the fierce loyalty she had for everyone she cared about.

_ He wanted her to come with him _ .

_ He loved her. _

(But she didn’t. And he was hollow inside.)

Falling in love with Brooke Davis had never been a choice for him, but the ability to send that back was something that she seemed to have no way around doing. It was difficult, to board that plane. To sit down in first class and squeeze his eyes shut and tell himself that he could get through this if he could convince himself that this wouldn’t haunt him like he knew it would. If he could convince himself that he would eventually get over loving this girl.

He comes back for the wedding, and seeing her, stunning and strong and still flattening him with every glance of her hazel eyes, reminds Julian how he is still stupidly not fucking over her. The dance they share feels sad enough to act as their last, but he doesn’t want that. Can’t erase the echo of  _ I miss you _ that lingers in the air even as her heels click her out of his grasp. He gives her mother a what for, and gives her the speech that he always wished he could give to his own father, fueled by the sheer volume of the love he had for her. Whether Brooke realized that or not.

(Julian has long since given up on convincing himself that he’s not waiting her for come back to him. It’s pathetic, but it’s true, and the only reason he catches the phone call of the accident after the wedding so quickly is because he’d been delaying his hotel check out way past what he should.)

Then Peyton was in the hospital, and he knew that as much as people needed to be there for the woman he’d once cared so deeply about, nothing rivalled his need to get to the one who owned his heart now. Brooke needed support just as much as anyone else, and Julian was going to be that for her. He’d never been more grateful for the pre-production that allowed him to push his return to LA a little bit longer and stay in Tree Hill. Seeing her vulnerable, seeing her so broken and fractured by the idea of a world without her best friend and future godchild in it, tore his heart. Tore it enough so that when Peyton had pulled through, when he was mustering up the strength to leave once again, when Brooke _ looked _ at him like that, Julian couldn’t help kissing her back. Couldn’t help the words that danced from his lips like a strained song that she refused to sing back to him. 

(He leaves the next day, and swears to himself that he’s going to try to forget he was no longer his own, and she always would be woven into every part of him.)

Hearing her husky rasp of her voice on his soundstage sent a thrill through every part of him. 

(Julian could see a happy ending coming from a mile away, but it didn’t stop the joy he felt when getting to one.)

_ I love you, Julian Baker. _

With his arms around her waist and her lips on his, Julian no longer cared about why or how someone could choose the other girl.

He was just glad that he got to love  _ this  _ one, and he was lucky to be able to do just that.


End file.
